Twilight

I recently was convinced to read the first of the Twilight books. Being a hopeless romantic, I fell in love with the story. And since there were parallels between Twilight and Pride and Prejudice (perhaps my all-time favorite book), I became hooked, reading the whole saga in about a week. I think the story is engaging, with action and romance. And I loved that you cannot guess what will happen next, and all of the twists that the author wove into it.

And then I saw the movie.

What an utter disappointment! I was just floored at the differences - I would say that the movie is 'loosely' based on Twilight. I think the only similarities were the character's names and the ballet studio. But seriously - the screen writer and director were absolutely terrible! They added scenes that made absolutely no sense, and were completely irrelevant to the rest of the story. Unless you read the books ahead of time and knew the personal struggles of each character, one would have absolutely no idea of what was going on!

And then there were the actors themselves. I think they did a fabulous job with Alice - the actress really portrays her accurately. And the actress that played Bella? She was just awkward and uncomfortable to watch. Extremely dry. She was like an awkward teenager the whole time - the character of Bella is supposed to be strong, and extremely mature for her age. I didn't see that anywhere.

And then there is Edward. I have to say that I originally thought he was an awkward actor as well, but then I read Midnight Sun and I can see exactly what he was trying to portray. However, there were several problems, none which are his fault. The first is that the story of Twilight was about Bella, not Edward. So the internal torture that he showed didn't make sense in the movie because it was not something that Bella was aware of until Edward told her. This ties into the second problem is that the screen play did not include any way for the characters to develop and show their individual problems. There wasn't any good dialogue whatsoever in the movie. There were only snipits of ideas - which would leave someone incredibly confused unless they had read the book previously. I am also floored that the director and screen writer would change the character of Edward. They portray him as this struggling, quiet, awkward, weak vampire; yet in the books he has an inner turmoil that he does not allow to be seen unless in intimate moments. He is also incredibly strong, and able to stop drinking Bella's blood after James bites her. He is also supposed to be charming - personally, with all this stuff they added into the movie, they should have let the actor playing Edward use his incredibly charming English accent. Bad move on their parts.

I guess the only thing I can applaud the movie for having is a kick-ass soundtrack. Seriously, its great! Although, I must say that I would love to meet with Rob Pattinson to tweak his vocals a little bit. His guitar is absolutely enchanting, but his vocal part is a little unfitting. There are certainly some nice parts to it, but there area some that he needs to change just a bit.

So this is my rant on Twilight. I guess I just hope that New Moon is better. In all honestly, I think I expected a lot from the movie - something equal to the adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Lord of the Rings. Yes, the directors and screen writers changed things around, and omitted some parts, but they still kept the core parts of the story and character developments as well as character traits. I hope New Moon is better.